Spiral curry puffs

I made the doughs here based on a recipe in "Delicacies of Chinatown" book, authored by a lady but unfortunately I don't know her name as it was written in Chinese characters. Luckily the recipes are in dual languages. There are several versions for the dough recipes as I had seen online and in some blogs, but essentially, the concept is similar to french puff pastry where dough and fat are inter-layered to get crispy light flaky pastry. The spiral effect here is achieved by rolling the two types of doughs (water and oil doughs) into a rectangle and rolling it up into swiss roll.

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Ingredients
Makes: 10 puffs

Filling:

3 tbsp oil

2 big onion, diced/chopped small

200 g chicken meat, cut into small cubes

4 tbsps curry powder, mixed with 5 tbsps water to make a paste

1 tbsp chili powder

1.2 kg potatoes, cut into small cubes

750 ml water

Salt to taste

Water dough:

300 g plain flour

120 g margarine

150 ml ice water

Oil dough:

200 g plain flour

120 g vegetable shortening

1/4 tsp salt

DirectionsPrep:6hr › Cook:1hr › Ready in:7hr

Filling:

Heat 3 tbsps oil in a wok. Saute onions until fragrant, then add in the chicken cubes.

Fry for a minute, then add in curry paste, chili powder and further fry for a minute.

Add in the potatoes, coriander, water and salt and simmer until the gravy is absorbed and the potatoes has softened. Leave to cool completely.

Water dough:

Mix water dough ingredients and knead to form a dough. Cover with kitchen towel and leave to rest for 30 minutes.

Oil dough:

Mix oil dough ingredients and knead to form a dough. If the dough is too soft, add a tablespoon of flour.

Assembly

Flatten the water dough and place the oil dough in the center of the water dough.

Enclose the oil dough by fully wrapping it with the water dough. Pinch the top part together to seal it off.

Flatten the combined dough into a rectangle shape. If there is any air trapped inside, simply make a small tear to release the air and seal it back.

Roll out the dough into a large rectangle with thickness of around 4 mm. The thinner the better.

Roll it up closely into a swiss roll starting from the furthest end rolling in towards you. Dough is soft, so do use both hands to control from both ends of the dough when rolling.

You'll get a long swiss roll like this.

Then, gently lift the rolled up dough and turn it vertically like this.

Next, roll it out sideways and further adjust by rolling up and down until you get a thin large rectangle once again. After this, repeat the two steps before this to obtain a swiss roll once more. Then, leave the dough to rest for 10 minutes.

Cut up the swiss roll dough into 1 inch-thick pieces. With cut side facing up, roll each piece into a round wrapper.

The circular pattern of water and oil dough is visible here.

Place a big spoonful of the filling on the center of the wrapper

Fold the wrapper over in half to meet the opposite side, then press the edges together to seal.

Pleat the edges. Flatten one part and pull it out a little bit.

Then, use your index finger to push in the dough forward. Repeat all round the edges. Don't worry if your pleating is less than perfect. It's the imperfection of home made that actually makes it perfect.

Fry the puffs in an electric deep fryer or in a wok (on medium fire) with enough oil to cover the puffs at least half way up. Turn over the puffs to brown both sides evenly. Dish and drain on kitchen towel. Extra un-fried puffs can be frozen and fried straight from the freezer whenever the need arises.